FSD demonstrates a "brilliant but brittle" intelligence, excelling at complex object detection while dangerously ignoring the basic physics of hydroplaning. It proves that high-speed data processing is still no substitute for the fundamental human instinct of situational self-preservation.
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Tesla FSD 14.3.4 : Driving in a Flash Flood
Added:Yeah, you don't want to be in that lane.
Whoa, full blockage.
Hello.
Today we're doing the morning commute on FSD 14.3.4.
Uh as you can see it's pouring down rain, rainstorm.
And um I realize I have never Not only have I never done a video in the rain, I've never really had much of a too many I've had too many rainstorms that I've used FSD in. So, I figured I'd hit the hit the record button this morning and uh kind of see what's going on. Early on, I can tell you that it's driving way too fast. It's driven through massive amounts of water.
It's not slowed down at all.
It seems like um for this rain. But anyway, we'll see we'll see what happens on the way to work this morning and uh see if we see if we have to disengage.
And uh if you like this type of content FSD driving content, please subscribe.
I'd really appreciate it.
So, it is confused right now cuz it's it's going straight, but it just got into a turn lane.
Um this is going to be really awkward because now we're blocking a turn lane.
Um but this light takes forever.
So, we'll see if I have the stomach for this. Um if somebody comes up behind me that wants to turn right, I might disengage.
Often times it'll turn here.
So, we'll see what happens.
>> Okay, there was no one came up behind me, so it didn't turn out to be that awkward of a situation, but this whole road has a lot of construction.
And I've seen it uh kind of inch that way before and then like realize it's mistake, but it was basically the whole road was covered with water, so you couldn't see any markings and it was just I think following a couple of other people that were turning, but so so far the rain is causing some problems, some havoc.
I'm going to try to keep it in standard mode.
Um but I might have to go down to chill cuz man it's it's driving really fast through some of these big puddles. This only, believe it or not, it's only been raining for about about 20 minutes, but it's just complete flash flood, massive storm here. Let me uh see if you can see this on the screen, what's going on here. You can see it's a pretty pretty big storm coming through here. So it's See this is really fast and all the This is all lots of water over here. I'm surprised it can't see all that splash and slow down cuz it's going It was going 49 in a 40 during a during a rain storm.
I'm definitely going to be on it to to be careful. And it does say FSD super bi- buys may be uh degraded, but doesn't seem to be uh doing anything about it as far [snorts] as changing the way it drives. I can feel the wind is just throwing us around here.
Hopefully there's no tornado activity or anything like that.
Um normally during these type of storms, [snorts] you know, I would I would wait at home maybe. I I usually don't get to work till 9:00. I usually leave at 8:00 to work at 9:00. It's about 7:24, but I have a meeting at 8:30, really important meeting.
So, I had to get out early and had to brave this this storm.
Um but And yeah, same thing if if I'm at work and uh starts raining pretty good, then or if there's a storm coming, they come they come through and say, "Hey, everyone can you know, everyone can get out of here early." Or maybe we'll stay late, but yeah.
Not too many opportunities to It is raining, man.
You can see the waves of wind coming on the on the street.
The area I'm The area I'm in is just a little bit north of Dallas.
So, we get massive downpours like this throughout the year.
For some of them in in spring, but really we get them scattered throughout the whole year.
But overall, I just feel like we should be going a little bit slower than this. This is this is pretty fast.
I don't feel like I need to go to chill mode just yet.
If I do, then I will.
But it's overall, I feel like it's just no reason to to push it on a big sweeping turn like that onto the highway. I think you should go a little bit slower when there's this much water on the road.
And what I would expect it to do on the highway is I would expect it to to really chill out and just kind of hang out with traffic.
Um but because everyone's going slower, I'm I'm hoping that it doesn't just go to the left lane and act like it it needs to get get around everybody. I hope it really does behave itself and just kind of be careful. You can see that person in front of me has their emergency or uh parking lights, whatever you want to call them, on. Some people just what drive with those on whenever it's uh whenever it's raining like this.
This gives you an idea that this is not your normal rainstorm.
Although it has a lot it's let up a little bit right now. Take another look.
This radar feature's really cool.
Uh so that's future.
We'll let it do another cycle.
This is now right now. So, yeah, we're right in the middle of it. So, we're going to get a lot more.
I don't know what it thinks of this truck with its flashers on.
If it's just going to try to follow them or go around them or what. We'll we'll see what happens here.
>> Oh, see this is too close. Shouldn't have gotten over that close to that car.
As soon as we got over, it's it hit a puddle, start spraying us with water, and then it slowed down.
And then now you're way too close um in an emergency situation to a car. You still don't need to get that close to other vehicles.
Under a bridge.
Yeah, we wound up over here in this left lane.
And visually, I'm curious how far FSD can see in front because we can I can only see and I'll turn the camera screen on so I can look through it.
You know, I I can't really see that far forward.
You know, almost like fog and there's been some, you know, FSD apparent yeah, can actually see through fog. I mean, these cameras they have the technology to see through fog. I don't know if they can see farther than humans can on this type of road.
I'm going to read this sign here. This is a old school sign telling you if there's a wreck up in front of us.
It doesn't look like there is. Sometimes it it will know before the the map knows cuz the map's delayed by you you it's just delayed because it has to gather the data. That map will get updated within probably 4 or 5 minutes of there being an accident, but looks like we're clear.
The reason I always check that is because there's and you can see it, there's a split here. I can either go this way or I can go that way.
This way is a toll way, cost about five bucks worth of tolls. This way is not, so I usually go this way.
Um save the save the tolls. It's about the same each way is about the same time, but and even if there's a wreck, I'll usually save the tolls, but this morning I need to get to work, so tracking about 8 8:13 to get to work right now. I'll probably make a stop, little breakfast stop.
That would as long as I get there by about 8:25, I'm I'll I'll be in good shape cuz I prepared everything last last night.
All right, so now we finally are getting the maximum speed limited and the rain really picked up just now.
I wonder what it sees now that it didn't see way back then.
Is it just more rain?
Because back earlier it was it was raining pretty good, too, and I feel like it should have had a limited max speed. I don't know what that does throughout the speed range. I guess we'll try to we'll we'll see if we find out.
Um I was about to say I would like to be in the middle lane, but the left lane is kind of a good lane to be in when it's pouring down rain, as long as there's no idiots out on the road driving 100 miles an hour, which there's not. This This type of rain, even those people know they have to slow down, but there's always less water building up in the left lane because of the road slanting that way.
So, I I don't mind this. Although, I don't think that's why FSD's doing it. I think it just still has us camping in the left lane behavior.
And if it's ever going to do it, it would do it now when the speed limit's 70 and we're going 55.
Um but overall, ever since that message came up, it does feel a little better.
It's going a little bit slower. Bro, I guess. Hey Grock, did you think I said hey Grock?
>> Yeah, I heard you loud and clear. Hey right back at you. Feeling better is a win.
>> All right, well, goodbye.
I'll have to I'll have to study the video there and see if I if I um summoned her or not.
I am curious if y'all can hear all this rain. By the time I hear myself saying this in the video, I will know the answer to that. But man, it's There's a lot of rain.
This car is probably a little bit better than the Model Y cuz our Model Y is a legacy Model Y and it's it's quite loud um in rain.
This is a Highland Model 3.
They have a little more insulation or something to to make them not quite as loud.
It's starting to really come down.
Love this new feature here, this way point button. That is a game changer. I'm Sometimes they come out with a feature and it's just like, oh, whatever.
I guess they needed more features. Other times they come out with a feature and it's like, man, I can't believe I wish they would have done that five, now 10 years ago, but that is that is incredible. That the to be able to add just with a button instead of having to go to another screen.
Um One of the best features they've actually come up with in my opinion in the last in the last year or so.
And that's uh judging it by how simple it is and how useful it is and how much I'll use it.
Cuz of course it's not you know, there's there's Grok and there's all these other terrific fancy things, but simple ideas like that that make your life just better are just uh are great.
So, if you see how dark it is out here and honestly I don't have a I don't film too much in the dark anymore, but um it would normally be bright and sunny right now.
I think you know, we would have the sunshade right here. I'd have it turned over to the left blocking sun coming in here cuz it it would be uh blinding me.
Everyone's going 55 miles an hour.
We're actually going a little bit faster than most people.
Got 2.9 miles to the exit to my little breakfast stop here.
>> We'll see how it does getting over.
There's quite a bit of traffic.
Fridays are never as bad as Today is Friday.
Um it's never as bad as Monday through Thursday or at least Tuesday through Thursday. I think Friday is the Ever since COVID, Friday is the universal day where a lot of people work from home.
Like a lot of people. I mean, it's a huge huge difference in traffic.
Um It's a good day for there to be a rainstorm because this would all just be stop-and-go traffic. And then with the rainstorm, yeah, it'd be probably hour and a half to get to work instead of an hour.
It's about 35 mi.
So, with zero traffic, I can do it in under 40 minutes.
But with the general morning traffic going to work and then the afternoon traffic coming home, it takes 50 minutes to an hour and a half.
All right, so we've gotten over this one lane.
Yeah, it's a complete thunderstorm out there.
You can hear the thunder or not with this microphone's of course connected to me.
And it has noise cancellation, so it it's You might not be able to hear a whole lot of what's going on out there, but it's pretty chaotic noise-wise.
>> Usually when I do have to drive through rain like this, there's not this much traffic out, but everyone has to go to work.
And it is but it is lighter than even a normal Friday. There's another person that I don't know what the I feel like I've growing up here, I I never really saw people use their emergency flashers just driving down the road like that. I don't know if that's you know, this is a area where the a lot of people have moved from California and other parts of the country just growing like crazy.
I don't know if that's something that people just aren't used to these massive storms and so they just they just feel more comfortable driving down the road with their flasher emergency flashers on.
I guess it's effective.
People will stay away from you and give you a little bit of grace for driving so slow.
Yeah, exit just perfect exit.
Didn't even It usually doesn't cross over the white line there. It usually waits till the dotted line, but it just didn't care. Maybe it can't see it as well.
But that's actually what everyone else does. It's one of the things that if it's the it's strict about find waiting for the dotted line or I think they need to give that up. Unfortunate I know that might be the law but law, but unfortunately they don't Sometimes there is no dotted line or there'll be a dotted line for about 10 car lengths, which is nothing.
So All right, so here we go.
Getting back on the highway.
Overall it's doing pretty good. I mean I haven't had to disengage except to go into that parking lot for navigation and the drive-thru.
Ever since it's come up with the speed limited, it's acting a lot better. It just feels a lot more normal storm driving behavior. I wish that would happen earlier.
What I want to say, but I I know there's no way this would happen is it'd be kind of cool if you're able to put it into storm mode or if it would ask you like um possible, you know, rain detected or or something. I I don't know. It's just get a little bit of help from the humans maybe for data.
Um data collection. I guess that would be going down to chill mode, but they ask for help on disengagements. You would think they would help ask for help with um I don't know how that that would execute, but you know, some sort of go into a mode and say, "Hey, slow down for rain."
Because it was it was going a little fast before that. It took it a while for it to identify that there was a storm.
There's another person with their flashers on. See, that person's just going faster than everybody else.
Yeah, I don't know. I I don't remember growing up ever seeing that.
But something I've seen in the last 5 10 years.
Maybe they teach that some states.
The two Rivians right there.
They They just came out I think with the R2 Rivian did.
Kind of a competitor to the Model Y.
It's an amazing vehicle.
You can really as so many of these legacy automakers are winding down some of their some of their cars and I really like them. I actually so many in the Tesla community give give some a lot of the legacy auto electric cars a really hard time saying that they're junk and all that and I just don't agree. I think they're actually just fine. I think they're every bit as good if not better than their gas counterparts, especially GMs.
GMs are built from the from the chassis up to be an electric vehicle.
Um but still Rivian is is pushing Tesla the hardest for sure. If if, you know, there's when if FSD wasn't wasn't the you know, primary selling feature.
Like meaning if both of them had the same FSD I would look really hard at one of those uh R2s. Those Those seem like very cool cars.
So good job Rivian.
They have a self-driving system.
Um I don't know if I want to give an opinion about that or state it more like a fact.
It It's going to be It's going to be probably 3 years before they have anything like this.
Um From my understanding self-driving and training a AI model, you know, everyone thinks that once somebody invents something and has something perfected or even almost perfected, it's like, "Oh, all we have to do is copy it."
But, Tesla's been building this for 10 years, and they have billions of miles of data of you know, billions of miles of driving, and then they've been to able to extract all the perfect data from all those miles to train these models, and nobody else has that.
So, I don't I think they they're saying that they're going to have this type of self-driving by the end of the year or next year, and um you know, it's just not going to happen.
So, overall, it's it's it is really nice to have FSD driving me through this rainstorm.
And um I think they have it. They really have that as soon as it went to the lower speed mode, that's exactly it started driving like it needed to. It just didn't do that early enough, so.
That would be my feedback to the system, to Tesla, to anyone using FSD. There's another one, see? They got their emergencies on.
I I don't know.
Again, that's got to be a thing somewhere.
Um it's feedback to all you that as soon as you get into a rainstorm, to really pay attention. This is This is like the most obvious thing you'd ever say, you know, is you really got to pay attention whenever conditions are adverse on FSD. Um Really, you got to pay attention all the time, but but especially especially then if And at some point it does pop up that uh the speed will be limited and at that point Okay.
Whoa, that's some That's some close lightning right there.
But at that point you can kind of, you know, still pay all pay attention, but it'll hopefully feel a little bit smoother just like it did for me today.
I was going to end the video, but it's starting to get It's starting to rain a little bit heavier. So, we'll we'll keep going a little bit.
Got 3.1 mi to the exit. This is the exit that basically drives east-west straight over to where I work.
Sometimes on Friday it'll it'll go all the way down here to a highway that takes that same direction, but today it's saying that there's a lot of red there.
I would just push it to do that. It actually says it'll only be a minute longer, but I don't like that red.
Um And I think once once you get on these uh this this city road that goes all the way across, it's a safe bet that you're going to make it at at this time versus a little bit of a risk if there was an accident building up right there then you would uh the traffic was building up. You you might incur an extra 10 or 20 minutes and I don't want to be late.
God, that rain is coming down again. I looked at this a second ago.
I thought we were clear of it right That's right now.
Yeah, this is raining as hard as it's It's raining on this drive right now.
Feel like we passed that truck already.
Might have been before the breakfast stop.
Getting over here really nice and early.
Well, 1.6 mi, but I've found that it's uh I mean, yesterday I'm on the tollway coming home.
Just going 80 mi an hour in hurry mode. It's.6 mi, and it's still not getting over.
So, to exit.
And every time I pull my phone up, and I record it, and then and it makes it. I'm I'm waiting for one that it misses it, and I'll post that. Or if it's even really close, I post post it on those short videos, but every time it it threads the needle.
But, one of these days people aren't going to let it over, and it's going to miss the exit.
I'll have a video for you on it.
I love these mid-90s or early 90s Ford F-150 trucks. I I had one of those back when I was I was just completely broke for a couple years. I bought one for $1,500 cash.
Thinking mid 2010s.
1,500 bucks I bought it, and had 206,000 mi on it. I drove it for 2 years and it had 250,000 mi and I sold it for $1,300.
Love those old trucks.
It's a inline six, very easy to work on, which is good.
Because it it had, you know, trucks that old need maintenance. Had to replace the water pump and the starter on it during that time.
But it never left me stranded.
They love gasoline. I'm telling you, man.
I mean, it it has those have two gas tanks.
And they just it just love gas.
We're about to exit here.
This is the perfect setup for the exit.
Got to be in this lane before it merges over so that you're not fighting um fighting for positioning in this lane.
Curious if it One thing it does here is this stripe, this white stripe right here, and I mentioned this earlier, goes for a very long time.
Nice lightning strike there.
A very long time and then well, it's not too bad today. We're getting this maximum speed limited. Doesn't feel as bad today for some reason. But a lot of times as soon as that stripe comes, people just start passing you uh that are that are behind you just just going around you because FSD waits until it gets the dot and dot and line there.
Uh this time there was just didn't matter. Everyone's behaving extremely well including FSD right now because it's raining so hard. This is where everybody drives their best.
Because and and the ones that are just scared bad drivers just don't drive.
Yeah, it's raining harder right now again. See, wow, this is interesting. You saw all that water splash up and it and FSD saw it and tried to avoid it. Yeah, you don't want to be in that lane.
Whoa, full blockage.
Wow, did you see that?
Wow, I've never experienced [laughter] anything like that on FSD. This is what's so great about V14 is it can I didn't I'm I have my foot up crossing over my leg, which is stupid. Don't ever do that.
Very stupid. I'm going to have I need to have my foot down here by the pedals.
It's a bad habit that I have.
So, I I did I mean, it just it just recovers from those red hands or red steering wheel situations. But yeah, you see all this water.
I'm glad I almost turned the video off earlier. I'm glad I didn't cuz this is this is huge.
There we go. We got through all that.
But this is the flash flooding that happened again. All of this rain an hour ago was didn't even wasn't even here.
It's all happened in the last hour. We get inches of rain in 30 minutes here in Dallas.
Now, we're basically in Dallas proper.
It's slightly north of Dallas. I think we're in Richardson going that going to Addison.
The car is making very quick kind of jerky lane changes because it knows it needs to get over quickly.
Uh which is exactly the right thing to do.
We're going to keep this going.
Very impressed with how it handled all that uh water situation back there.
That's real stuff that happens when you drive it when you drive here in Texas. It's just not very often.
Another emergency flashers.
And again, I probably wouldn't wouldn't have uh probably would have waited cuz I like I said, I normally get to to work at 9:00.
I probably would have just waited and got here later if it wasn't for this meeting. In fact, I'm going to check my phone right now.
Look at Teams and see if sure everything's on the schedule.
People are saying Yeah, so I just checked my, you know, Teams and people in the group are saying bring bring an extra pair of shoes to work.
Yeah, it's interesting because this is a little bit of a unique situation.
FSD is not driving as smooth. It It's reminding me a little bit of like old old FSD in the way that it stops and the way that it um the way that it behaves because it this It's almost like it decides it needs to do something and it just does it.
Um quickly. It doesn't have the smoothness um behavior.
Which is fine. It feels natural though because it's just this is almost like how a human would drive in this situation like you you're just like hiding your your's paying super close attention and it's just like okay, I want to get over there. Okay. Okay. Okay, let's do it.
You know, that's that's almost like how you how human would drive. So, it's really really pretty cool to see FSD acting this way. It feels very natural even though it is not as smooth.
This is all I would get into the left lane though, I will say. Yep. Oh, look at that. It asked and it should do it. Now, I think it might have done it for a different reason than I was saying. I think it just decided it wanted to go past that car. It wasn't going fast enough. It's just there's going to be less water just like on the highway. It's going to be less water in this lane than that lane.
Whoop. More water.
Getting kicked up here.
Wow.
I think I'm saying wow not because this is just like shockingly unexpected. I'm just happy that I on my way out the door I just grabbed my camera. Just like, you know what?
Let's make a video today.
Had no intention to, but I just thought with the rain and being I'm glad I did cuz I've never gotten anything like this on video.
Okay, very polite behavior of FSD right there.
Very good behavior.
It saw that need for that person to get over and it just it just said it just stopped. It it gave no like uh Sometimes it'll So, I guess power's out in this neighborhood possibly.
Well, I guess I see the street signs or the street lights on, but I guess uh this light has died.
This happens often times in these storms.
But yeah, sometimes when someone's trying to get over FSD like will slow down a little bit basically forcing them to be aggressive and if they don't if they're not aggressive, then it just passes them, but that time it was like nope, you need to get over, we're stopping, you're getting over.
And uh I appreciate that a lot. I it just seemed I don't know if that has to do with the rain.
Um And what was interesting is it knew I couldn't really see that there was that lane was blocked and I guess just because it's looking way up here, it could see that lane was blocked.
And that person had nowhere to go.
Okay, people are acting very strange here.
Including FSD, it should have went.
Okay, we're going now.
I did not I had my foot over the accelerator, but I did not push it.
It didn't like there was that one car that stuck way out. It just did not feel comfortable going and it and it was right.
That was the perfect time. Okay, so it's 35 mph. You see all this water right here. It should not be going this fast.
It should not be going this fast. This is too fast.
I'm going to let it do it cuz I feel safe.
But yeah, it's going to start hydroplaning here.
It needs to slow down. I'm doing this for you guys to test FSD.
But it needs to slow down.
Still FSD. I'm I'm doing the Euro or whatever, put my hands right around the wheel, got my foot hovering over the brake ready to take over.
Now it's just speeding right back up.
I'm going to go down to chill mode. This is This is horrible behavior by FSD right now. This is the worst part of This is the worst it's doing. It needs to slow down. It's keeping up with that car. It's almost That car is not should not be doing this either. This is way in front of us and it's it's almost like it's chasing that car. I'm in sloth mode right now. I went all the way down to sloth.
Which doesn't matter cuz we're under the speed limit, but we need to be and and sloth really really all of these modes have the caps, it seems like, on the speed limit.
But it needs to be I don't know. That that that was really bad. I really wish I had the camera button to show Tesla that. I did not disengage. Probably should have. Um But yeah, if you're driving in 2 in of rain or it's just splashing everything, you you got to slow slow I mean that's easily hydroplaning, but we were going a speed that I felt comfortable if it started hydroplaning, we could take over and I was looking all around the vehicle. There were no cars or right around me.
So, that's why I let it do that.
Don't ever let it do that if no situations take over.
There's lots of water on the road. I am glad to see it not being in that lane. I don't know if it's doing it >> [clears throat] >> since we don't have a whole lot of data, a whole lot of time. I don't know if it's doing it just because it's you know, if there was no water on the road, it would not be over there, but you definitely don't want to be in that lane.
You can see it's just You can see the curb there. The water in some places is all the way up to the curb.
And all you're going to do is just splash tons of water and risk hydroplaning.
Well, I think I'm going to do it, folks.
I think it's about time to end the video.
Almost to work.
Wow, thank you so much for joining me.
This has been an exciting drive, especially these last 15 minutes.
[laughter] Um never experienced uh an FSD drive drive like this ever. And I've driven FSD for probably at least 30, 40,000 mi in the last 2 years.
So, again, thank you for joining me. If you like this type of content, please subscribe.
We'll see you next time.
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